Drones new research tool for wildlife, land

Lance Brady, with the Bureau of Land Management, makes a final check on a Honeywell T-Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone, before it is launched Monday at the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area.

It’s black and squat, matches the size of a small trash can, and looks a bit like R2D2 from “Star Wars.”

It also may represent the future of how federal agencies research the health of land and wildlife from the air.

On Monday morning, an unmanned drone, with an advanced point-and-shoot camera attached, rose about 200 feet above the grasslands here, about 40 miles southeast of Tucson. Its purpose was to help researchers understand how efforts to restore some of these same grasslands are working.